


They Will Tell You I Died For Love

by eraofstories



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: I figured I should tag it, The death doesn't happen in the fic, but it's certainly no worse at all than the canon, it's sort of her talking about her death so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraofstories/pseuds/eraofstories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why Eponine went to the barricades in her own words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Will Tell You I Died For Love

After I die they will tell you that I died for love. That I loved Marius Pontmercy so very much that I let a bullet kill me so that he might live. They will tell you about Eponine’s hopeless love, and of the grand love story of Marius and Cosette, and you will listen, because the world will listen. They will tell you that I went to that barricade hoping to die that I might not have to watch Marius and Cosette marry, so that I need not watch the child I had scorned marry the man I loved so much. They will even tell you that I hoped Marius would die, so that I could punish him for his betrayal, so that we could die together. 

They will be wrong. 

They will be wrong, but no one will correct them because I will be dead, and the only person left alive from our side of the barricade who was there when I died will be Marius Pontmercy himself, and I certainly never told him anything like this. His story will be believable because I did love him. He liked me. He listened to me, like Montparnasse, like my family never did. Except Gavroche. But he’ll die too. My baby brother, dead. I am glad that I went first. If I had still stood when they shot him I would have charged the guard myself without a second thought. 

But it doesn’t matter. Because I was already dead. As I say, I loved Marius. He really did see me as a friend after all, and that was something I had never had before. So I loved him. It wasn’t hard. But that isn’t why I went to the barricade. 

There are many reasons I went, but the first is simple. I owed a debt. Cosette was a pretty child, and charming, and my mother hated her for it, and punished her for it. I was a child too, but I could surely have tried harder to help her, to keep her safe. Or at least to be her friend when my parents couldn’t see. But I did not and she suffered. I owed it to the little girl I did not help to do what I could to bring her messages to Marius. 

He was only on the barricade because of me. I hid her letter from him, so that he would die, because I was angry, because I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do. But then I remembered her. That little girl crying so hard. And me. Laughing at her for it. I owed a debt to her. 

But there was more to it than that, because when I went to the barricade, I admit that I went in part because I had nothing at all to lose and no prospects left at all. But not because Marius loved Cosette instead of me. Perhaps the upper classes can fall in love once and then spend the rest of their lives languishing because their love was not returned, but the life of the poor is short and hard, and if I had lived I might have found another to love. But there was still that debt to Cosette you see. I owed it to her to keep her safe from my father and his cronies. So I screamed and let my father hit me. My father who didn’t even recognize me on his own. Because I owed her that much, didn’t I? 

But I don’t think I could have gone back home after that. My dad would never have let me. I had nothing left to lose by going to the barricade. And Gavroche was already there. I couldn’t even keep him safe. Not from my father when he kicked him out, and not from the revolutionaries, and not from the National Guard. So I went. 

Why wouldn’t I? Do you really think that only these stupid men, men who aren’t even truly oppressed are the only ones who want freedom? No. But they are the ones who can risk it. The women who sympathized with them, sewed flags for them, offered up their furniture, those women did not rise with them, because unlike the stupid boys of the ABC those women have families that would starve were they to die. It is one thing to accept your own death; it is something else entirely to accept the death of your children and families. But with my father’s slap any other obligations I might have had disappeared, aside from those to Gavroche, but there has never been any way to protect him even from himself let alone the guns of the soldiers, and certainly staying away from the barricade would have done no good at all. So I went to fight for my freedom and for the freedom of the people like me. 

I did it for Cosette who I had wronged and for Marius who I loved and for the ABC full of idealists who didn’t understand why the people would not rally to their cry. I did it for Gavroche my baby brother who I failed and for the person I might have been myself had my life gone differently, had I had different parents, had Marius seen me as I wished. But most of all I did it for me as I am, because how could I have accepted even one more day in that world where I had nothing at all, no power, no strength even against my own family let alone against anyone else. In that world I did the only thing left to me.

I dressed like a boy and I went to fight. 

They will tell you I did it for the love of a boy. They will be wrong. I did it for my own peace because there was nothing left to do, and because once upon a time there was a little girl who did not fight injustice, and she owed a debt which needed to be paid to the world, to the girl she scorned, and to her own conscience. 

They will be wrong because I died on that barricade on my own terms, of my own will, next to a boy a loved, fighting for myself. I died for me. And in doing so, I won.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any comments especially on Eponine's voice I'd love to hear them. I'm not entirely happy with it...


End file.
